Knitting, Biking and Some Sober Second Thoughts

FO Friday: Coastal Hoodie

Two sweaters in one week. Now I probably won’t finish another one for years. Just the way the timing goes sometimes I guess. I really love it, although I do regret not waiting it out to knit it all in the same yarn, but it seems to be okay.

Yarn: Malabrigo Arroyo – 636 yards Prussia Blue, 319 yard Borraja (that gorgeous purple colour); Araucania Ranco Solid – 541 yard colourway 141 (blue), 114 yards colourway 146 (yellow green). I had a ton of yarn left over based on what I had calculated I would need. I had about one skein left of both blues and the purple and there’s another entire skein of the lighter blue I didn’t even wind.

As I noted previously, I somehow bought the Araucania without realizing it was 75% non-superwash wool and 25% nylon so the sweater is not machine washable as I intended, which is a big part of why I wish I had waited to find all Malabrigo (=100% superwash) in colours and yardages I could use. The Araucania is a bit duller and fuzzier than the Malabrigo too. But overall they did knit up to the same gauge and you can’t tell from any reasonable distance, so mostly it’s the washing thing that annoys me.

Size: I knit the 40.75″ size because my gauge came out really small (lots of notes on the Arroyo and Ranco pages that they are listed as sport weight but are actually more of a fingering weight), 20 sts and 28 rows = 3.7″ even after washing. The actual finished bust size was 36″, which just added to the ridiculous knitting time. No more sport weight sweaters!…unless they’re really pretty like this one.

Didn’t really need much blocking, but I did it anyway. It grew in length a bit with the washing, which was good. I used my dictionary and thesaurus to pin down the sleeves since I ran out of blocking board space.

Outside detail of pocket. Kind of interesting how it is knit into the pattern. I haven’t knit many pockets period, but I’ve definitely never knit one like this.

Inside detail of pocket. Have I mentioned how much I love this purple colour? Because I do.

This view gives you a pretty good idea of how the stockinette versus reverse stockinette came out. The stockinette does look “cleaner”, but I do like the reverse stockinette; it looks more “rustic” or something. Can’t decide if I made the right choice.

Arm detail

Hiding the ends in the buttonband worked out as beautifully as promised. I did carry many of the colours along loosely, knitting the first stitch at the ends of the changing rows to secure them a bit (you don’t see this because the buttonband is picked up one stitch in). And then I weaved in to the 2nd or 3rd row of the buttonband (it took me two rows because there were so many ends) using this great tutorial. Had to be careful when some of the bits wanted to poke through, but with enough pulling they seem to be staying invisible. Thank goodness because I was really starting to worry about 3/4 of the way through when I saw all the ends piling up and I think if I’d found the buttonband thing wasn’t going to work, I would have just stowed this away in the furthest corner of my closet and cried for a while and then pretended it didn’t exist. I just couldn’t face all that weaving.

I knit the sleeves in the round on a size larger needles (US 7s) to try to get similar gauge to the body (knit flat), which seemed to work pretty well. I did weave in those ends as I went. I could not get the jogless thing to happen, especially on the single green rows, so I used the ends to try to even them up, which was partially successful. I definitely got better at that as I went, which means it’s cleanest at the bottom where the jogs are most visible anyway.

Modifications

As always, worried about sleeve/shoulder size, I cast on 9 sts instead of the called for 7 when separating the sleeves, for a total of 202 sts.

Since I was trying on as I went, the waist shaping ended up being 4 sets of decreases instead of 3 (186 sts) and then I only did 4 inc rows (202 sts again), but did another 8 rows to get 13.5 inches in length.

This makes the stitch counts slightly off for the pockets, but it’s pretty straightforward to figure out where they go.

I used colour 3 instead of colour 4 for the pocket liners because I love that purple so much and I could see I was going to have a ton of it left.

Sleeves: So the larger needles as mentioned. Also, since I had cast on 9 sts for the underarm, that’s how many I ended up picking up there for a total of 73 sts. I only ended up needing 40 rounds on the sleeve before my first dec (again, just based on trying it on and realizing I was nearing the elbow at that point) and ended up doing an extra decrease at the end, which got me back to the 41 sts I was supposed to have for the size I was knitting. Then I worked 5 rows to get a slightly longer arm and also because of the way it would make the stripes line up with the right cuff colour, which was handy.

Moar pictures

After blocking

Great pockets!

Hoods always look sort of weird on me, so it’s not this sweater particularly that’s the problem.

A blog about knitting, biking, movies and books although I can’t keep up with new releases and I like to overthink things for a month or seven. I’m also finishing up my PhD but it’s taking a long time, so it’s probably best if we don’t talk about that. Currently living in Toronto.